Happy MLK Day!Yeah, I said "Happy MLK Day". I know people usually couch their sentiments about this holiday in a more sober manner, but I thought it might be nice to bring a little joy to the whole affair.
Why be happy on Martin Luther King Day? I have several reasons for you and none of them involve the extra day off from work you might be getting. Here they are...
One: Celebrate because you are NOT the guy from Shooting the Messenger. This Floridian Son (Daughter?) of the Confederacy took time out his busy schedule to run a King hit piece from noted dunce Don Boys which includes gems like:
"My research also indicates that King was a drunk, plagiarist, bisexual, and Marxist. Try to remember that we are not concerned with this race of complexion, but his character."
The article, not surprisingly, concludes with the author's decision to NOT celebrate the King Holiday.
Two: Celebrate because you are NOT Alan Stang. Prolific fundamentalist author, jabberbox and all-around-asswipe Alan Stang let's the world know that King was a fornicating communist who plagiarized like a mofo. That's not all, though... His "non-violence" was really quite violent. Oh, and Reverend King wasn't a real Christian. He also uses the occasion to take a jab at Barack Obama. Seriously, I couldn't make that shit up if I tried. Here's an excerpt of Stang's perspective"
"Because Mike [MLK] as a 'martyr' is still so valuable a revolutionary tool, the facts about him that routinely ooze forth despite such organized suppression are usually greeted with hysterical charges that this is a 'racist' country. Of course, such accusations are wearing extra thin in a country that soon could have a black President named Hussein. Join me in uncelebrating this spurious holiday."
Three: Celebrate because you are NOT James from The Hudson Valley Freeman. James supplies another anti-King post. This one seems to focus predominantly on King's assignations with prostitutes, but it does manage to sneak a little anti-Semitism into the mix, just for fun!
"Despite these facts, King's Jewish handlers and their allies in the media were steadfast
in their laudatory portrayal of King."
Four: Celebrate because you are NOT part of New York White Pride. Okay, that's something to celebrate every day, I know. Nonetheless, the cause for celebration is highlighted when you see NYWP whining about the King should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as dead white guys.
"These allegations were brought up on a now defunct Web page supposedly in order '[not] to bring down MLK, Jr.' but to "subject him to the same sort of dirt-digging that leaders such as George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and other dead white guys have suffered."
Five: Celebrate because you are NOT the author of Things the Lord Told Me. "MLK the Dirtbag?" explains that King wasn't a real Christian. In addition to his alleged religious shortcomings, he was also just about every other bad thing imaginable. Warning: the site says "Open Theists Not Allowed". Keep that in mind in case you're an open theist, I guess. It's too bad that TTLTM is locking the OT crowd out. It keeps them from gems like:"The man should not have his own holiday and should not be revered by Christians. He was a hypocrite in a very high manner that lied his way to the top of the social change/racial reconciliation movement. He also didn’t hold to many essential Christian doctrines (deity of Christ, resurrection, virgin birth, etc,) yet we call him a great Christian! It is also widely documented that king was a Communist (who by the way are atheists) sympathizer…so why give the man a holiday? Read his papers. You’ll be shocked (I was) Then, read the bible. We should all be more careful of people we revere as 'saints'…"
Six: Celebrate because you are NOT David Ben-Ariel. Ben-Ariel's Beyond Babylon joined the choir of those singing against King with "The Real Martin Luther King, Jr." Again, attention is focused on King and his (ab)use of prostitutes. Celebrate the fact that you don't write crap about those who...
"...would DARE share the plain truth about MICHAEL Luther King? Nothing like exposing the BIG LIE of MLK, but the sheeple continue to the slaughter, willfully ignorant and/or indifferent about such false idols."
Seven: Celebrate because you a NOT Carlton Huffman. Huffman celebrates MLK Day by posting a 25 year-old Jesse Helms speech at Conservative V.O.I.C.E. Again, I am not making this shit up. People actually think they're contributing something of value by trotting out old Jesse Helms' speeches. Hard to believe when they include:
"The conclusion must be that Martin Luther King, Jr. was either an irresponsible individual, careless of his own reputation and that of the civil rights movement for integrity and loyalty, or that he knowingly cooperated and sympathized with subversive and totalitarian elements under the control of a hostile foreign power."
Eight: Celebrate because you are NOT James Bronson. Bronson is credited as the author of a weird "It's a Wonderful Life"-meets-neo-nazi-fantasy piece that News from the West ran with the tag, "A Great Piece You Must Read".
"It's a Wonderful Race!" shows what happens when Clarence the Angel shows George the lippy liberal college kid what the world would be like if Europeans never existed. People live in caves and there are parts of the world that haven't discovered the wheel, etc. The highlight/lowlight of this twisted piece of shit is its portrayal of King as a with doctor with a penchant for casting evil spells name "Matunbo Lutamba Kinga". I am not kidding, people. Don't worry, there's a misguided professor named Dr. Silverstein, too, just in case you can't handle your racism without a little anti-Semitic seasoning!
Nine: Celebrate because you are NOT Jenab. Jenab's Fireside Chats has a standard-issue anti-King post, too. It breaks little new ground in the realm of stupid and hostile posts about MLK, but it does have a rousing conclusion:
"And this is Black people's great hero? This is their shining example? This is their model Black man? This is the man that other Blacks look up to? The cheater who got away with it. The con artist who beat the system. The pervert who never went to prison. The commie agitator who was honored with a federal holiday. The preacher who stole money from his own church. Very funny! Michael King was even more corrupt than most of his brothas are. He didn't deserve a single one of the honors and tokens of status he received: not his degree, nor his medal of freedom, nor his Nobel prize, nor his national holiday. The whole MLK-is-a-hero thing is a huge fraud."
Ten: Celebrate because you are NOT Kevin Alfred Strom. I know, this one is a little obvious. If you're creating shit like "The Beast as Saint" about King and people are re-running it on StormFront fourteen years later, the suck-o-meter is pegged and most people are probably happy not to be you. Nonetheless, MLK Day reminds us how thankful we can be for not being the kind of guy who says..."Every January, the media go into a kind of almost spastic frenzy of adulation for the so-called "Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr." King has even had a national holiday declared in his honor, an honor accorded to no other American, not Washington, not Jefferson, not Lincoln. (Washington and Lincoln no longer have holidays -- they share the generic-sounding "President's Day.") A liberal judge has sealed the FBI files on King until the year 2027. What are they hiding? Let's take a look at this modern-day plastic god."
Eleven: Celebrate because you ARE capable of recognizing the disturbing history of race in America and the role King played in creating progress.
Twelve: Celebrate because you ARE smart enough to understand that King was both a flawed individual and a successful leader. You are allowed to admire his strengths while disliking his weaknesses.
Thirteen: Celebrate because you ARE able to differentiate between the establishment of a holiday designed to honor the positive aspects of King's legacy (and the overall value of a civil right movement) and making King out to be a perfect human being.
Fourteen: Celebrate because you ARE capable of reflecting on King and his life without obsessing over conspiracies involving massive race wars, Jewish control of fill-in-the-blank, the continued push to destroy white culture, and all of the other paranoid crap that seems to influence everyone from the White Power simpletons to "just plain folk" who don't like to think too hard.
Fifteen: Celebrate because you ARE able to find your own way to approach this holiday productively and with an eye toward improving our ability to function as individuals and as a society. Celebrate your ability to find positive messages and opportunities for real learning and discovery from King's messages and life.
Sixteen: Celebrate because you UNDERSTAND what those first ten reasons tell us about race in America and the challenges that still exist. Celebrate your ability to recognize the counterproductive and negative positions others hold and the responsibility it creates for the rest of us to effectuate some kind of positive change.
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The guy liked fooling around with prostitutes. He may have even smacked one around. Sometimes he drank a little too much for some people's tastes. His politics were too left-of-center for a lot of people. He had a history of plagiarism.
He also challenged us to be better. Maybe even better than him. He mobilized powerful forces for change.
There are reasons why we have MLK day and they have nothing to do with evil Jews, political correctness hellbent on destroying all vestiges of Western culture, or a whitewashed record designed to create a tin god out of King.
MLK day is worth celebrating.
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Thank you for that. I knew what sort he was but it's nice to have more detail. Hopefully everyone will read this and get a little perspective in the form of truth.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you get it, Slick.
ReplyDeleteJohn Brown
Thanks, John. I didn't even get up an MLK post I was so self-absorbed in enjoying the day off and doing other work. The kids and I will discuss MLK's legacy tomorrow (we focussed on writing better essays, today, after some terrible essays I had turned in on Thursday and Friday) and your post reminds me to take a moment when I get time near a computer (my computer is down, at the moment) and reflect a little on why I take MLK's legacy so seriously.
ReplyDeleteThe best that I can say that I've seen independently verified by a credible source is that MLK had an affair, he may have plagiarized some of his doctoral dissertation, and that he played pool when he was young, contrary to his father's disapproval and teachings.
But the good that Martin Luther King is so immense and those flaws so small, common, and part of a life where screwing up is a part of learning, as far as I'm concerned, at least, that it is hardly worth much time at all talking about them relative to talking about his contributions to civil rights, efforts to deal with poverty and world peace.
I'm willing to talk about both. It's just so clear to me what really mattered.
The kids and I will discuss him tomorrow, but I can only hope that they will read more than what we will discuss in that short period of time. I will recommend Taylor Branch's excellent biography/history of King and the civil rights movement that I recommend to anyone interested in the period.
And someone needs to do a decent biopic movie on the man and the period.
But, mostly, I just hope kids and most people figure out what these clowns clearly have not - that a very courageous man, powerful for all the right reasons and, like every other person, having his flaws and mistakes, did what others told him could not be done and had not been done for a hundred years since the end of slavery. And he did so peacefully and with a keen sense of the need to do so even as violence threatened and was tragically unleashed in his name and the name of that cause.
He reinforced for us, as did Ghandi, that important and sustainable social changes occur primarily and over the long term with new thinking about our problems and, hopefully, as peacefully as possible. "Prick the conscience" and "love thy neighbor" were ideas that King took seriously. The world would be better to take them seriously, too, I think.
Obviously voting rights involve changes to the legal code (although I do think there is an important and legitimate debate/discussion over how we might do that best, in the future or, counterfactually, in the past, that avoids the most violence, bloodshed, and tragedy).
But a world where Democrats in Congress pass Federal laws enforcing voting rights for African Americans, with all of the violence that surrounded such efforts on all sides, without Martin Luther King in the picture, would likely have been a fairly bleak picture and perhaps never have happened at all. Without Martin Luther King, the ugliness embodied in all of that violence and in the comments of the people you cite, John, would likely have much more gotten the better of America and led us down a far uglier road. Noone believed that a civil rights effort that had stalled and often failed in the hundred years previous to MLK's appearance on the scene would been successful in the way it was during his life. His presence, in great part, made it happen and certainly gave it serious momentum that was not otherwise present.
He is an excellent example, I think, of how individuals matter in history, with all of their flaws, I think. I would bet on civil rights for America's and the world's future without him. But I'm not sure I would have bet on so much arriving as quickly as it did without him.
The country and the world is missing something without him, I know that. I hope we can find a way to keep that kind of courage and decency with us, even in his absence.
My work and my life is very much inspired by his example, for all of my disagreements with him (had I known what I know today, I would have likely favored a voluntary force sticking with Vietnam, as well, given a realistic level of support necessary to win that war; and I think the future for those making low wages is building businesses that build more real value and wealth, generally, and offer them much more, financially and otherwise, than labor strikes do, generally).
But his kind of courage - the kind that wears love squarely on one's sleave - is rare. And I honor it.
By the way, those pictures rock. Very nice touch to find those and share them.
ReplyDeleteMakes my day of listening to kids not give two shits about Martin Luther King not seem quite so bleak.
They could use most of the nigger fetouses as part of a Brangelina sanctioned, federally subsidised school lunch program in the inner cities of America.
ReplyDeletefeto-uses feet-uses, heh!
ReplyDelete